Special Mention:

We were the winning team for this challenge out of the 13 competing teams.

The challenge

Mint.com is a personal financial management software aimed at managing your cash flow, budgets, and bills from one place.

We were asked to pitch ideas to revitalize mint.com in order for it to compete with the growing number of personal finance apps. As part of the deliverable, we were asked to create a pitch deck to Intuit's senior leadership with at least two hero screens of the UI with careful attention to details and visuals.

Design Process

To summarize our approach, we started by discussing what transaction meant to people and then looked at how transaction data was represented in the Mint app. We felt that in it's current form it was limiting in many ways and we thought that the transaction data could be more meaningful. So we designed Mint Events.

Our Design

Mint Events is a new way for the users to view their spendings.

Here transactions related to an event are grouped together and shown in the form of a story line, allowing you to have better understanding of your spendings.

Do you want to know how much you spend on Coffee every month?

Do you want to know how much you spend on office travel every month?

Do you want to know how much your summer trip to New York cost you?

Do you want to know how many subscriptions you run and how much they cost you?

"With Mint Events, you now have a way to know."

Repeat Spendings

Repeated spendings over a long period of time can be easily captured by Mint Events and thereby allowing you to know what your priorities or weaknesses are when it comes to spendings.

Contextual Information

Transactions appear with photos along with the people you were with at that moment. Users are therefore able to make effective decisions on what is important and what is not.

"With Mint Events, you can also customize your own events"

Details of the Design Process

My Role

I participated equally in all aspects of the project - coming up with questions, sketching ideas, providing feedback on ideas and contributing to team discussions.

Client Interview

We interviewed the client to understand their expectations for the project. We found out that they wanted to hear big ideas from the team and not just solutions focusing on improving the existing product. They also placed emphasis on the visual execution to make a convincing argument.

Exploring the space through questions

We started by asking questions about the problem. This allowed us to go deeper into the problem space and look at areas that we would not have thought of.

Role

What does it mean to make a payment?

What does transaction mean to people?

Behavior

Why do people need a financial management software?

Do people share financial matters with others?

How often do people need to go back and look at their finances?

Why do some people not use a financial management software?

How does other things in life link with purchasing behavior?

Inspiration

How would Alipay PayPal approach a financial management tool?

Planning

How do people plan big spendings?

How do people deal with their budgets?

Transaction Data

What does transaction mean to people?

How can we utilize the transaction data?

What does this transaction data do?

Purchasing Habit

How to Influence purchasing habit of people?

What are people's opinion on a savings account?

Apart from knowing "Where I spent the money," what information will be useful?

Digging Deeper on the transaction data

Then we started getting deeper into what transaction meant for people.

We understood that transactions doesn't mean just numbers but were influenced by a lot of factors. They are not just data. They connect to different elements in your life. They can be more meaningful.

Finding the problem in the current transaction data

We looked at how the transaction data was presented by the application in the current form. It tells you when and where you spent the money but it doesn't tell you the whole story.

We felt that the current categorization of the transaction data into home, food & dining, shopping, and utilities was limited in representing the spendings of a user.

The transaction data in its current form also makes no effort to provide information about repeat spendings or cumulative effect of a particular spending.

Sketching Ideas

Then we sketched ideas on how we can present the transaction data in a meaningful way. Such that users are able to better understand their spending at the same time ensuring that transactions carry it's essence around it.

User Journey Map

Before

With Mint Events

Interaction Flow

What I learned

I learned the importance of inquiry. Asking questions enables one to think about things that you normally would not have thought of. In a small amount of time frame, we were able to identify several different problems areas to work on.

I learned the importance of visual execution when presenting or pitching ideas to a client.